We stood facing each other in silence, our child in my arms between us.
Then the look of shock dissolved into a mask of indifference.
“Be careful, my love. Don’t ruin it.” He touched Michael’s hair with a gesture that was so tender, so untimely, that I could only take it as a threat.
Chapter 26
The Twin
The decorators returned early the next morning. J.C. was on her way to meet them right after breakfast, but stopped me before I could leave the dining room.
“Please, let’s talk this afternoon. It’s important.”
Overhearing, Press had said, “It’s going to be cool today. I’ll have Terrance set up a table in the library and light a fire.”
“Wonderful!” J.C. gave me one of her enormous smiles and hurried off to the third floor. Press followed after J.C., obviously still uninterested in talking with me directly.
The night before, I had pleaded a headache and spent dinner and the rest of the evening in my room. It didn’t matter that Press was left all alone with J.C. He might have had sex with her on the carpet in the central hall, for all I cared about either of them. He seemed capable of it. For most of the night, I lay on my bed, wakeful, wondering why he would treat me so badly, why everything, including my son, was being taken from me. It had to be that he was simply finding more and more ways to punish me for Eva’s death. There was nothing else I’d done.
After consulting with Marlene about the inevitable lunch, I went upstairs to Olivia’s room, and then into the morning room. The Magic Lantern sat, cold, on its table. I spoke Olivia’s name. I spoke Eva’s name.
There was no enchantment left in either place. They felt as dead as their former residents.
(I am loath to mention the small voice that I did hear when I was in that room. It was the spirit of my own desperation, and it sounded much like Press’s voice. What would it matter if you were dead? You’re not needed here any longer. Not wanted. Not needed. What use is it to live?)
“They are going like gangbusters up there!” J.C. entered the library talking. “They’ll be finished in a day or two.” She pulled out the chair across from me at the table Terrance had set up. “This is so elegant, Charlotte. How kind you are. I know you don’t really want to do this.” When she surprised me by touching my hand, I withdrew it reflexively, then was embarrassed. But she didn’t react, only unfolded her napkin and laid it over her lap.
“It seems I don’t have anything else to do.” It was a response that came as close to rudeness as I could allow myself. I had no friends in my own house, so why shouldn’t I have lunch with someone who was probably my enemy? Now that I was alone with her again, and she was being serious, I realized just how much she intimidated me. At twenty-seven, I was not quite a generation younger than she. She could have been my much older, more successful sister.
Seated in front of a cheery fire, we genteelly dissected the two tiny braised quail that Marlene had prepared. They rested in a nest of stewed figs, and I found mine surprisingly delicious. There was also a cold salad with radishes, fennel, and walnuts. J.C. ate without self-consciousness, slathering warm butter on the homemade rolls, drinking two glasses of wine to my single glass. How she stayed so thin, I didn’t know. There were girls at school who excused themselves to the bathroom right after meals so they could purge their stomachs. But J.C. sat, contented, when we were finished, and smoked a cigarette. I suspected that she had the vibrating metabolism of the mantis-like insect she resembled.
She kept the conversation light with stories about her time studying design in Paris just before the war. Despite my mood, I laughed aloud when she told me about finding herself naked in a couturier’s window after a curtain fell down as she was being fitted for a gown.
After lunch, we moved to another part of the room to drink the coffee Marlene had set up on a low table before clearing our dishes. Strangely, I found myself relaxed and wanting another glass of wine. But the wine was gone (perhaps I’d had more than one glass, after all). There was cognac in the room’s bar cabinet, but I remembered the last time I’d been drunk in the afternoon.
No one cares if you drink, came the voice in my head. No one cares if you die.
Distracted by my darkening thoughts, I wasn’t prepared for the direction she took our conversation.
“Has your daughter contacted you?”
J.C. was now sunk comfortably into one of the big leather chairs. I sat in the other, my shoes off, my feet tucked beneath me. Until that moment, I’d felt almost drowsy.
When I didn’t answer—frankly, I was too stunned—she asked me again.
“Your sweet Eva. Does she come and visit you?”
“Do you think you’re being funny? Why would you ask something like that?”